First impressions: Windows Live Home tries social networking

Microsoft has announced a revamp to Windows Live Home, and has outlined its …

Now that the rollout of the new version of Windows Live Hotmail has been completed, Microsoft is ready to reveal the next update to another online Windows Live property. This time, it's the rather new Windows Live Home, a page that has received very little coverage since it was first revealed in August 2007 (it launched later in October). The revamp will be arriving later this year, and it will look a little something like this:

As you can see, the interface changes bring Windows Live Home up to speed with the new Wave 3 look. A private group of Windows Live testers (including yours truly) received access to a beta version of the site a while back. The new interface changes are a significant improvement, but there don't appear to be very many customization options. Sure, you can move the categories up and down in their respective columns, and you can choose how many items they each display, but you can't move categories between columns, nor can you remove categories. I don't have a need for the "What's new in your network," and I'd rather have the left column contain just my e-mails. I would also like to be able to add my calendar to the page. The only way to get to it right now is from the "more" drop down menu at the top.

Beyond just user interface tweaks and links to more Windows Live properties, Microsoft has expanded its reach to allow its users to include third-party services on their Windows Live Home page. For everything else, there are RSS feeds.

In a short phone interview with Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Experience Program Management, I got the details on what exactly Microsoft is planning to do here. The company believes that there isn't—and won't ever be—a single social networking site that takes care of everyone's needs. As such, the software giant is looking to complement what's already out there and offer a few things that no one yet has.

Jones explained that today's announcement is really a "coming soon" one, and that the site will be rolled out on home.live.com by the end of the year. A link will likely be placed on the live.com page to tell users about the site. Following that (possibly in February), the client applications of Windows Live will be updated to the final version of Wave 3.

As politely as I could, I told him that I really couldn't see anyone moving away from Facebook to use Windows Live Home, and Jones said he was perfectly fine with that. According to him, Microsoft isn't trying to convert anyone from competing services, at least for now. Microsoft is just getting a feel for social-networking sites and is trying to help meet the needs of its users. One way for that is with the integration of Windows Live Groups (screenshot above; we've seen it already in Windows Live Messenger/Hotmail/Mail). Groups allows a user to keep track of certain collections of contacts and to be able to easily communicate with them all at once. There's also a large emphasis on controlling what you can share with which group of friends, something that Facebook isn't as strong at.

My first impression is that the site has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go. Microsoft needs to give users even more control in customization, and add in more third party services. I would kill to be able to check my e-mail, calendar, weather, Google Reader feeds, and Facebook notifications from one page. On the other hand, I don't really have the energy to hunt down friends that currently aren't on my Messenger contact list and add them to my Windows Live Home network. Others may want to, and more power to them.